The title explains it all really. That is the most common reaction one experiences when playing any F.E.A.R game as it is full of blood, dead bodies, blood, a creepy naked lady, blood, and an amazing back story. Oh yeah and blood. This is absolutely one of the top two scariest games I've ever played, I'll get to that later, and I love it.

F.E.A.R 2 places you as Becket, basically just a soldier with epic reflexes, who tracks down Genevieve Aristide, who wants to reopen the facility that completely messed up Alma, and tries to arrest her. This fails and you end up running about after her while learning how to defeat Alma. I know that's not a very good description of what happens but it literally is you running from one place to another and shooting lots of men. That doesn't sound good either but trust me, it is.

The main reason I picked up F.E.A.R 2 is because I wanted to scare the crap out of myself and oh man, did I! The game primarily uses jump scares which have gotten a bad rap over the years from terrible horror movies using them cheaply, but they work so well in this game, in addition to the sparsity of Alma herself. When she's around, your screen goes a little funny, like you're losing signal, but it's not like she's in plain sight the entire time. I found that in most cases, I didn't see anything unusual, but I still got the feeling she was there, watching me and that was pretty creepy in itself. For about half the game when you see Alma she'll be in the distance or behind a locked door, meaning she can't get to you but once you hit level 8 (Elementary), holy balls, do you get a shock! Now, I'm not used to having naked women all up in my personal space, so when I saw Alma chilling at the other end of the corridor playing with the lockers and lights, I thought she would just fade after a couple of seconds, but no, she suddenly appeared in my face, right up in my face, and I have never button mashed so hard in my life. But that's not the end, oh no. She pins you up against a wall and whispers "don't you see" and something I couldn't hear properly. And did I mention she was naked? In the first game she's a sweet little, fully clothed, girl about 8 years old, now she's a grown woman and bare. Complete and utter bare nakedness. Some of you may like the idea of a naked woman pining you to a wall (it's not that kind of pining though) but you'd be wrong. I don't care if she was technically 'hot' Alma (oh yeah, there's such a thing apparently), I don't want Alma of all people all up in my business. No offence to her, of course.

I thought this was really interesting. Not because of the nakedness, obviously.

Anyway, it's not just Alma's appearance and magical disappearing act that scares the player, you get strange hallucinations every now and then which give a little more depth to the story as well as there being ghosts in certain levels, oh and scuttly little buggers. The ghosts don't appear often and sometimes you can walk around seeing their wispy figure floating away, completely harmless. There's other times where you're in a tighter space than you'd like with not enough light where they hit you with their little ghost fists. I can't really explain how scary some of the areas are, particularly Elementary. The way the lack of light and mass amount of gore has been used, along with creepy sound and the feel of danger to the player, really does get the heart racing. If you're not bothered about playing the game and want to see what I'm talking about, click here and watch the video. Don't if you want to play through the game yourself. I refuse to be held accountable for any spoilers you may find. If you do watch it though, bear in mind it's scarier if you are the one playing and you're alone in the dark. As for the scuttly little buggers, they are failed test subjects who were supposed to be psychic commanders, but couldn't take the heat and now are pretty much insane. They scuttle along the floor in a couple of levels and jump out at you, usually landing on your head and you have to button mash B (or the platform equivalent) until you free yourself. They are pretty darn scary when you haven't built up your mental defenses yet and you're in a dark and tight space. Plus they are weird looking.

Such a kissable mouth...

As I said all the way up there, F.E.A.R 2 is one of the scariest games I've played. I'm not sure if it's number one as it's in contention with Condemned: Criminal Origins which I reviewed last year (shameless plug). Both games have a great story to them, both play off jump scares, both don't have enough light present much to my nerves' dismay, but there are a few things that make them different. With F.E.A.R 2, I felt I was jumping between an amazing story and horror factory with Alma and all the psychic shenanigans, and any other shooter. This may just be me, but the crossover between fighting Replica soldiers and searching for Alma didn't blend as well as I'd hoped. There were times when there would be no trace of Alma at all for quite a while, and it felt like it could have been a different game. With Condemned, the gameplay seemed to compliment and add to the fear of everything; you had very limited ammo for your pistol and so relied heavily on melee weapons, meaning you were forced to get up close and personal with everything you were fighting. Although Alma does have the same immediate danger feeling since she can rip your skin off and disintegrate your bones in a second if you tell her she's looking a little thin and needs to eat more, but she's not always around to keep you scared. There are always crazy ass hobos around in Ethan Thomas' world. If you've played either or both games I'd love to know what you thought about each.

On the whole, I love F.E.A.R 2 because it does what I wanted it to. I was scared to the point of screaming, and I never scream, and I liked the heavy shooter element (I know I haven't talked about the gameplay but it's like any shooter really, except you have a neat little slow mo thing which helps in a tight spot, plus the game is really pretty). Project Origin is a good time and I absolutely recommend it. Obviously there'll be those of you who won't think it's not scary but you just wait until Alma's all up in your face. Naked. Then you'll see. If I have to see it so do you. Just imagine this is happening all the time except with 'hag' Alma. Or 'hot' Alma I suppose. That might be nicer.